They are among the honorees in U-M’s annual Staff Impact Awards program.
In a July 20, 2020 online ceremony, 15 U-M and Michigan Medicine staff teams and individuals were honored as “wall-breakers and bridge-builders…finding ways to collaborate across units and find solutions.” Included among this year’s Staff Impact team awardees is the three-person (2.6 FTE) Michigan Center for Interprofessional Education (IPE) staff.
“We thank Frank Ascione and the Center for IPE Executive Committee members who nominated and supported us for this award, which we are humbled to receive,” said Vani Patterson, assistant director of the Center for IPE; she is pictured at center above, along fellow awardees Mary Beth Lewis (communications specialist) at left and Lindsay Telega (senior administrative assistant) at right.
In the nomination for the award, the Center for IPE staff was praised for helping faculty and administrators across U-M’s three campuses in creating opportunities for interprofessional engagement, collaboration, and innovation. Examples of the IPE staff responsibilities include:
- Coordinating and promoting courses and activities across U-M’s health science schools, including the large IPE foundational courses and activities.
- Producing training sessions for faculty (coordinating travel and details for session leaders, arranging venues, and communicating before and after the training sessions with up to 100 faculty participants).
- Managing details and communications to attract and support faculty cohorts of a dozen or more for each of the five years of the Interprofessional Leadership Fellow Program.
- Helping administer grant and funding programs, which stimulate interprofessional education and multidisciplinary approaches to health care.
“Our first goal with IPE is to overcome existing barriers to collaboration among health science schools to create a climate in which faculty, practitioners, staff, and students understand and value collaborative interprofessional practice, said Center for IPE Director Frank Ascione. “The initiative and creativity that the Center for IPE staff has displayed in doing this includes learning to work with dean’s office representatives and faculty at all our participating schools to get promises made and kept. They are contributing partners to faculty and leadership of the schools to fuel this revolution in health professions education. Our shared aim is to transform the future of collaborative care to improve health outcomes at a time when our country sorely needs it.”
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Students and faculty of the 10 health science schools located on the three U-M campuses are the key constituents of the Michigan Center for IPE, which is housed at the College of Pharmacy. More than 3000 health science students participated across 35 IPE opportunities in 2019-20—and we welcomed the U-M schools of Law, Education, Business, and Engineering into the IPE movement. Progress with interprofessional education and practice is made possible by continued support from the U-M health science deans and Office of the Provost.